All writers I’m sure know this feeling when every once in a while you look back through old bits you wrote years ago and think wow I wish I still wrote like this; it’s usually a silly insecure way to stay glued on the past but it’s very effective, giving memories weight like stones so you can be dragged around by a past that may or may not have existed. My goal in life, or one, is to get rid of all of my pasts. And to build the perfect lamp. And also to have sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. If I had the therapist my ex in California had, who told her while she was making like a Category 5 through our life to ‘keep going with this, you need to act out’ as if I am a Jim Henson muppet creation for the servitude of her healing, if I had this therapist, she would say ‘yes, go have sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral; in fact try to do it with a virgin entering the convent; might as well act out full on; but these are some of my goals.
Here’s something I wrote a few years ago in sort of an addendum to my solo show Pentecostal Warhorses about the aforementioned ex. But this little addendum applies to more than one person in my life; I’m a different person and a better one than when I wrote those, or at least in a better mood but I like it cause it has verve even if the verve is wrapped in a bit of cranky sauce. And it reminds me of one of many pulsars that float and bob in the sky inside and not to forget to keep that voice pure; that’s the fiercest battle. Sometimes I look at myself, in those valley of the shadow of doubt spells, and I wonder why I’ve held out so long when I seem to have had to so many changes to become a successful playwright, screenwriter, performer. I’ve had my chances. But if one molecule of disease hits the water supply, you have an epidemic in a month; my soul is water, the body is mostly water and space inside the water, so when one little bit of compromise rips in, I’m flat and useless. So how it is with the art; keep that satellite signal between that pulsar within and the pen pure; fanatically pure.
Anyway, here’s the piece:
There are people in your life that can get away with murder through your eyes. It’s absolutely forgiveable, because your heart sees with all of it’s eyes, some glossed over from decades of sleep, some never used, but all of the eyes of the heart start to glow until the chest feels like a Lite-Brite set or a techno-honey comb. And all of those eyes see and all they can do is hand out forgivenesses like the earth does to the weather. What’s between two people is ionic and perverse and, for me, at least, meant for the plume and the page but it does not change the eyes in the heart, each one chewing it’s blink at a pace that’s rapid and sweet, complete, complete and perfect. So when I sit on my jaded perch looking down at my own shoes convinced they’re the reflection of other people, i feel the separation between myself and these eyes. Excuses, anger, suffering and the great doubt that comes with shedding a heartbreaking alliance with the past. The great doubt which looks like a blatant vagina or an electric amoeba and all I keep seeing are Pollock’s brushes on the floor. It’s wild, nothing more. I don’t know what’s past that. But for the past few months it’s been growing, this feeling like I’m walking around wearing my izod shorts from third grade to the public. Like I used to do when I was little, cut off the feet of my footie pajamas afte I outgrew them because I loved them so much. I get attached. And so I get so attached to people, fleshy footie pajamas. It hurts like a bitch. But the past few months have been laced with more awareness and this deep, intensifying feeling that I simply cannot hide anymore. What I am hiding, I don’t know. but it feels like hiding and it has to go. So every night, and this began a couple of years ago, though who knows; when you try to measure non-linear feelings with Cartesian time it’s like measuring an apple’s weight by shouting at it. I measure my life in flesh bearing moments. Little moments shift us. Like a moment when you pick up a Little Debbie wrapper that goes flitting across the street and at that moment you realize you always loved your ex-wife or
